Tangled Webb (4 page)

She said, “It'll be
easier
! We can give each other ideas! The way we were doing the other day about Kelsey.”

“Oh, hey, great. You mean ‘The Mystery of the Godfather's Granddaughter'? That would be a winner.”

“Well, we could think up something better about the Mafia. Something real mean and scary.”

“We don't
know
anything about the Mafia.”

“That doesn't matter! We can make it up. Or else—what about illegal aliens? There's this beautiful, exotic-looking girl, and she just transferred into this other girl's high school, and nobody exactly knows where she came from—”

“Not even the principal?”

“Well—she
says
she's from another town. But—”

“Doesn't she have her transcript?”

“Oh, don't be so—so—realistic! Okay, she
forged
one. And she pretends she can't speak Spanish. But one day this other girl hears her jabbering away in fluent Spanish—”

“Who to?”

“Oh, to—um—her mother. On the
phone
. And that gives her away, see? Help me think of a Spanishy name for her—Annamaria, maybe?”

“Wouldn't she forge a name, too?”

“Oh, yeah! Sure! Something
not
Spanishy.”

“Molly O'Brien.”

“That's too Irish! Something real
American.”

“Betsy Ross?”

“Juniper
, come on! Don't be like that—” Alison was giggling, though, and I was too; and about then Daddy came in and told me he hated to interrupt what sounded like a serious
intellectual discussion, but he had to return his customers' calls.

Later

Guess what! Kelsey now has a complete, made-up story about where she grew up. I
know
it's made up. If it's true, why didn't she tell Alison and me any of this stuff the other day?

She brought it up herself. Earlier this evening, after Daddy took over the phone, I went into the living room and turned on “The Real West Show,” which I kind of like when I'm in the mood, and pretty soon she came down from putting Preston to bed and started watching too. It was a thing about Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce, and filmed in some high, deserty-looking country. Well, when it was over, Kelsey said, “Reminds me of where I grew up. Near Grand Coulee.”

“Grand Coulee?” I repeated, scurrying madly around in my mind for some kind of map that would remind me where Grand Coulee is. I'm sure it's in eastern Washington, but I wouldn't have put it “up
north
” which was what she said the other day. Of course, it's north of
here
. I asked, “Isn't there a big dam at Grand Coulee?”

“A town too. We weren't right
in
the town, though. We lived in a trailer park out near the dam. My dad was a mechanic with the Army Corps of Engineers. Al-Albert Morgan.” Kelsey swallowed. I could hear her do it. She was looking past me, sort of at nothing, and talking in this real casual voice as if it wasn't a bit important. Maybe it isn't. Or
wouldn't
be if she'd told us all this in the first place.

Anyhow, she went right on. They'd moved their trailer from Grand Coulee to Chief Joseph Dam, which I guess is on the
Columbia too, and then her dad worked for a while at the John Day Dam in eastern Oregon; and I guess she'd gone to high school in a couple of those places. Her mom had run off with somebody a long time before that. She doesn't know where her mom is. And then her dad was injured on the dam somehow, and died, so he was gone, too, and her brother moved to Australia, so she married this Tim Blockman. And after
he
drowned in the Coast Guard rescue, she brought Preston to the Portland area to find a better job, and ended up here in Hillridge.

I said, “I didn't even know you had a brother.”

“Yeah, Bob. He's a lot older than me. I hardly knew him, really.”

“How come he moved to
Australia?”

“To raise sheep. He used to work on a sheep ranch in Idaho, summers, and he liked it.”

I wondered why he couldn't raise sheep in Idaho—it seemed lots more convenient—but I didn't say so. It would've been mean to pin her down. Personally, I think she should have skipped the brother. He was just one more she had to kill off or send someplace far away so nobody could trace him. I don't believe a word of her story. I wonder if Daddy does, or if she's even filled him in on all that.

Just wait till I tell Alison!

FRIDAY, MAY 24

We had a test in social studies today. About the Egyptians. I think I only missed one question—couldn't remember which Rameses it was that built the temple at Abu Simbel. I'm sorry
we're nearly through with the Egyptians; I liked them. I like that funny way they drew people—sideways from the neck up and the waist down, but with the shoulders and chest facing front. It looks great, for some weird reason. But you can't
do
it, yourself, no matter how you twist.

I didn't tell Alison about Kelsey and the Grand Coulee, after all. I don't really feel like talking about it. I mean, why can't Kelsey
trust
me? So what if she once did something she shouldn't, or somebody's after her, or whatever it is.
I
wouldn't care—and I wouldn't tell anybody, either. Maybe I'd try to
help
. I just don't like people to lie to me.

SUNDAY, MAY 26

Daddy's going to take all of us over to the Cocked Hat for a hamburger this evening, to save Kelsey cooking. She does make hard going of it, but she's trying, I'll say that for her. Yesterday I went into the kitchen for a diet Coke and there she was at the breakfast table, going through all Margo's old cookbooks. I felt sorry for her all of a sudden—she looked so sort of outnumbered. I would've said something, only I couldn't think what.

I got my Coke out of the fridge, and when I turned around she'd closed the book she'd been looking at—it was one of the big fat ones, Julia Child I think—and was smiling in this embarrassed, apologetic way.

“I thought I might study up a little,” she said. “But I'm afraid the course is beyond me. I haven't had the prerequisites.”

“There's lots easier recipes than the ones in there,” I told her. I came over to the table and picked out a couple of the
most splattered and worn-out books. “Daddy and I have been eating out of these for years. And if
he
can cook something, believe me, it's easy.”

Kelsey took them, and smiled at me, and turned a few pages, but then she looked straight at me and said, “I want to learn the hard ones.
She
was a very good cook, wasn't she? Your mother. Margo.”

She acted like it was hard for her to say Margo's name, as if it took
courage
. But she said it, and kept her eyes looking right into mine—not challenging or anything, just wanting me to tell her honestly.

I said, “Yes, I guess so.” Actually I don't exactly know whether Margo was such a great cook. I do remember we used to have some real fancy thing with a foreign name one night, and maybe soup out of a can the next. But I was still at the age then when anything I'd never tried before was poison, so I don't think I got much benefit out of Julia Child. “I guess she was a good cook when she felt like it,” I told Kelsey. “And opened a can when she didn't.”

She laughed and said, “Fair enough. So long as you
have
a choice. So far all I can do is open cans. But I'll improve, don't give up.”

I told her I wasn't worrying about it and I didn't think Daddy was, either, but she just said Daddy was the most patient man in the world and maybe the best one, and deserved something good to eat; and she pulled another big fat cookbook toward her. I guess she's going to pass that course or bust.

She is fond of Daddy, I know that. More than fond. She really loves him. You can see by the way she looks at him sometimes, as if she's trying to think up things good enough
to do for him. I wish she'd talk to me oftener the way she did about the cookbooks—just frank and ordinary, without—well—hiding anything.

Why do I always feel she's hiding something? Maybe a lot of things. More than just where she grew up. I don't know. But she
is
.

MONDAY, MAY 27

We ran into the Bradleys over at the Cocked Hat last night—Cindy and Tom Bradley, who run the Hillridge Players Theater. I hadn't seen them in ages, and I guess Daddy hadn't, either. Well, they were mainly Margo's friends, being part of the theater bunch and all. After Margo died, naturally Daddy never went to any of those cast parties or saw people at rehearsals or anything, so we sort of lost touch with most of them, even Cindy and Tom. They were always top favorites of mine. They haven't any kids, so they used to make a big fuss over me, and bring me bits of discarded costumes to dress up in. Until just a couple of years ago I still had a cavalier's hat they gave me, with a big moth-eaten purple plume. I don't know what happened to it.

Well, anyway, we'd just started on our hamburgers when in they walked, and there was this big reunion—only it would have been a lot less complicated if we hadn't been in a crowded restaurant, standing up to say hello with our napkins in our hands and our chairs bumping the backs of our knees, and if Daddy hadn't had to introduce Kelsey right away, and explain to her who Cindy and Tom were, and to them who
she
was. Then of course they spotted Preston in the high chair—and, well, who's going to pay attention to anybody else when
Preston's around? He just calmly went on stuffing himself with hamburger while they fussed over him, as if he hardly knew they were there, but then he threw one of his little sideways glances up at them, and grinned so his dimple showed, so you knew he was just kidding. Flirting, that's what he does. I didn't blame them for getting hooked right away.

Only I kept waiting for them to get around to me, and they never really did. Right at first, when they were shaking hands with Daddy and saying what a long time it had been and everything, Cindy spotted me standing on the other side of the table, and said, “Is that little
Juniper
? Good heavens, honey, I can't believe how you've shot up!” which made me wish I'd stayed sitting down. But then Daddy sort of turned her around to meet Kelsey, and Tom smiled at me and asked, “How's school?” and before I could answer
he
had to turn and meet Kelsey, and in about five minutes they had to leave because they were in the way of the busboys, and people coming and going and all. So that was it.

Oh, well. I don't know what I expected. But I mean, they spent twice as much time gooing over Preston as they did talking to me, and we're
old friends
, I always thought. They used to pay more attention to me than to my folks, almost. When I was little and cute. Like Preston is now. I guess it's the “little and cute” they like, and not the person.

Yuck. Does that ever sound disgusting! As if I was
jealous
of Preston. Well, I'm not! It was just that this one time—because it was Cindy and Tom. That's no excuse, is it? So, okay, maybe for a minute, just tonight, my nose was out of joint—that's what Gramma would say.

If I'm going to be that kind of a snerp I'll just have to get over it. Nobody twelve years old and practically seven feet tall—well, five-six-and-a-half, all legs and not much else anybody'd
look at—could hope to compete with a two-year-old Munchkin like Preston. Anyway, I don't
want
to compete. I mean, why would I want anybody going goo-goo over me? It'd make me vomit.

Oh, I don't know what's the matter with me. I'm going to bed.

MONDAY, JUNE 17

I haven't written in this book for ages. Well, three weeks. It isn't that nothing's been happening. It's that I haven't had time to write about it. There's so much to
do
at the end of school, with exams and the Final Assembly and having to make up a health test I missed way back in April and forgot all about. And of course the Rose Festival going on in Portland, which keeps taking your mind off studying. And last weekend it turned really warm, warm enough to go swimming in the neighborhood pool. We all went, Saturday and Sunday both. Preston loved it. He was like a little fish, splashing and splashing so that he nearly drowned whichever one of us was holding him stomach-down, in a sort of swimming position. Sometimes he practically drowned himself, though he never seemed to care.

But today it's all overcast again and you need a jacket. Typical Oregon June weather—though for a wonder it didn't rain on the Grand Floral Parade this year.

So now school's out and it's just plain Monday and all of a sudden I've got more time than I know what to do with. It's always this way at the beginning of the summer. Here's all
this freedom you've been looking forward to, and you can't think what it was you needed it for.

Well, for one thing I can catch this book up on “The Kelsey Mystery,” as Alison calls it. I did finally tell her about the Grand Coulee story, though I probably shouldn't have. She gets so carried away. I only told her because I was irritated at Kelsey, and at Daddy too, and Alison was around, handy to explode to.

I started getting irritated quite a while back because of one of those dumb, pointless things Kelsey does when you're least expecting it. It was a week ago last Thursday. I remember because on Wednesday the Navy ships sailed into Portland harbor for the Rose Festival, and the next afternoon Daddy took us all downtown to go aboard one. Daddy picked me up at school to save bus-riding time, and waited in the car while I ran into the house to hurry the others. Kelsey was just getting Preston up from his nap. The minute I came in I could hear him laughing, upstairs in his little room, and Kelsey talking away to him the easy, cozy way she does when the two of them are alone. She never does it when anybody else is around. She kind of clams up and puts herself in the background, as if she's shy about letting us see she's crazy about him. Which is crazy, itself, isn't it? I mean, why wouldn't she be?